A Reversible Quilt Coat for a Dog

I have an old dog with lots of aches and pains. This year I decided she could benefit from a coat to keep her joints warm.

I found a fantastic tutorial that shows you how to make a dog coat out of a woman’s jacket. What a great way to recycle! Using a woman’s coat to make a dog coat is brilliant! Go HERE to get the coat pattern.

Thank you Diana for allowing me to use your pattern and post about it here.

I decided to use the pattern to make a Halloween quit coat that reverses to have a side that would be for Christmas.

Making my Halloween quilt template…

Once you have printed out your coat pattern and adjusted the size you will need to:

1. Measure the width of the back coat panel (not including the straps).

2. Decide how much of the width you want your quilt blog to cover.

3. Be sure to account for the border strip that will go around the center block. Mine was a finished border of 1 inch. My cut fabric was 1 1/2 inches to allow for 1/4 inch seams.

4. Be sure to allow for 1/4 to 1/2 inch seam allowances. Your finished quilt block will be smaller than the original template.

5. Cut a square piece of paper to the size you decided upon.

6. Fold your paper in thirds. I have marked my folds so that you can see them.

7. Fold the other side into thirds.

8. Draw diagonal lines from the corner of the middle sections through the center point to the opposite middle corner. Do the same with the other center section.

9. I have colored in the sections to make it look less confusing. For your template you will cut out one black corner section. For the candy corn template you will cut out one gray section.

10. For the Pumpkins I used the template from my Pumpkin Garland Tutorial. Use only half of the stem pattern. Set aside for now.

11. Measure the triangle from top to bottom and divide into thirds. Cut fabric strips adding 1/2 inch for seam allowances.

12. Sew the strips for your candy corn to make one long strip. Always iron seams to the darker fabric. Be sure seams are ironed flat.

13. Place your triangle template over your fabric strip. Be sure the tip of your triangle is over the fabric you want to represent as the top of your candy corn. I flipped the triangle for the next cut to make another triangle in the opposite pattern and am saving it for another project. Flip your triangle again and cut another candy corn. Keep working down the strip till you have 4 candy corns or have used up all of the fabric strip.

14. Sew each corner piece to one triangle. I recommend ironing the seams before sewing the next sections together. Keep sewing pieces together till you have the whole square. Iron it to make sure it lays flat.

15. Trim your quilt block to make sure that it is square.

16. Sew on the trim fabric. Start with matching up the corner. The strip should be long enough to over hang at the end. The next strip will start at the edge of the previously sewn strip. Work your want around the quilt block. I found it helpful to iron the seams after I added each strip.

17. Iron on a sewable adhesive to the back of your pumpkins and stems. Position your pumpkins on your quilt block and iron them down. Top stitch around the edges and sew in any details onto the pumpkins and stems.

18. Fold the raw edges of the trim fabric under and iron them down.

19. Appliqué your quilt block to your base fabric by: 1: Ironing on a sewable adhesive and or 2: top stitching the quilt block all the way around the edge on to the base fabric. If your quilt block didn’t turn out completely flat don’t use the sewable adhesive.

20. Assemble the layers of the coat with right sides together with the batting on one side. Sew around the edges, leaving an opening to turn it right side out.

21. Turn right side out and top stitch around the edge. For the center pattern I stitched over the seams (stitch in the ditch) and around the edge. For the straps I quilted a random cris-cross pattern with meandering lines.

Note: I chose to use a solid Christmas fabric of the reverse side to simplify things but a poinsettia quilt block would look lovely.

Katrina

As always if you decide to make a quilt coat of your own, please let us know, we would love to see it. Pictures of your projects are always a welcome addition to our Flickr Group.

Diana, posted this wonderful write up on her blog about my dog coat. I am speechless... I simply can't thank her enough for making it so easy to make this coat.

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